Restless Heart Syndrome
by darksideofnight
Summary: It had not started so badly, depending on your outlook. Death the Kid is convinced by his friends to take medication for his OCD. This doesn't go well. Slight AU. Green Day song fic


A/N: So, this is the story I mentioned in Older Brother Knows. AU because Kid is being affected by medication, and is a song fic of Green Day's Restless Heart Syndrome. Enjoy!

EDIT: the lyrics aren't included anymore, as that is a copy right violation, but I still recommend listening to it, or reading the lyrics, because the song goes quite well and is very good. The 888 is where the lyrics originally were.

It had not started so badly, depending on your outlook. Kid's OCD attacks had been increasing in both frequency and severity. Even before the decline, these attacks had been a huge problem, which he knew, but was powerless to stop. His friends and father had grown ill of it.

He understood why, of course. He too, had grown tired of his affliction. Well, he'd spent a life time being frustrated with it, even though symmetry itself caused him the utmost joy. But that part was irrelevant.

Now, he stood, holding tiny white pills, staring them down with deep golden eyes. He understood that this was how it had to be. But he was afraid. Without symmetry, what would he be? Surely someone, he knew this, but he would not be himself, and this frightened him. Bitterly, though, he recalled the expression on Liz's face when she suggested he go to a doctor. His friends did not like him this way. If he continued to function, obsessed with symmetry, they would never want to be around him. He would be alone.

With a snort that was both indignant and cynical, he swallowed the pair of white dots dry. He walked out of the bathroom, unaware that one neurosis would only be replaced with another.

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He took them for many days, a look of disgust on his face every time he swallowed. It continued this way for a month, until one day, he didn't feel disgust…only the sickening relief of finally getting a fix. He felt his stomach lurch when he recognized the emotion. He ran down the steps, all relief gone. Liz and Patti looked at him curiously; they were unused to seeing the reaper so excited, except when under the compulsion of aesthetics, which he had not been for nearly a month. Patti chuckled.

"Kid's acting weird~!" Liz gave him a look suspended between concern and confusion.

"What's wrong with you?" The Shinigami swallowed hard.

"N-nothing…just, just go back to what you were doing…" They both shrugged, and did as he suggested, ignoring the monochrome who fled back up the stairs, lost as to what to do. If he told, what would they think? If he didn't tell…what would happen?

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The following days marked a decrease in his health, both mental and physical. The blood he coughed up tasted saccharine sweet on his tongue. Dark circles never went away, and his bones stood out more, thanks to his rather rapidly decreasing weight. He thought it only a matter of time until he could no longer go one missions. The idea filled him with great sorrow, and yet he could do nothing.

"Are you alright? You look sick." Maka would say. He would nod listlessly, mutter something about being just fine, and walk off, usually to satisfy his addiction.

"Dude, you're throwing up like a pregnant woman…what's up?" Black Star commented when they played basketball and he became ill.

"No-nothing…I'm just…sick, is all." No one seemed to believe him, least of all Liz and Patti, who had spent years dealing with his odd state of health.

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What a disgusting liar he'd become. A Shinigami couldn't even get sick, and here his friends were believing he'd become some sort of hypochondriac. He knew lies, he'd dealt with them his entire life, but he was unaccustomed to being the one dishing out the falsehoods.

A few days after the basketball incident, his father looked at him quizzically; they stood in the death room, along with Spirit Albarn. He felt nauseous. _As long as Spirit's here he won't say anything…_ He thought weakly, fingers twitching at his sides. The insurance offered no real relief. If his father did say something to him, at least it offered an escape. Even if that escape was disgrace.

"How did the mission go, Kiddo-kun?" Liz shot her meister an irritated look, annoyed that she'd been convinced to lie about what had happened on the mission. It hadn't been _that _bad, had it?

~yesterday~

The Kishin egg was getting away. So he had to go after it, right? Before he realized what he was doing, he was falling through the air, towards the Kishin and the street, with Beezlebub nowhere to be found.

"KID, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" Liz screeched frantically, while Patti laughed. He simply stared at the ground that rushed up at them for a good long second, hearing Liz scream for him to do something. Before he broke out of his reverie, the ground finally met with his body, Liz and Patti escaping the brunt of the collision as their gun forms bounced off the ground. They immediately transformed and began to look the smashed Shinigami over. Eventually, they sat still, content to wait for him to heal on his own. This, though they did not know why, took longer than it usually did.

"Kid…" Liz said, voice still shaky from their near death experience. "When did you start making such bad decisions?" The blood in his eyes blocked the two-tone gold, but they opened frighteningly wide. _Bad judgment is a symptom of anti-anxiety drug addiction._

~present~

So it was understandable why Elizabeth was frustrated with him.

"It went rather badly, as we didn't catch the Kishin, after all." He had to make certain no one knew…he would prefer to die than to be revealed as the dishonorable disgrace to his father's name which he had become. And which he had probably been his entire life. And, at the rate he was going, he probably would end up dying of it.

"That's very odd for you, isn't it?" His hand twitched again. Spirit eyed him oddly.

"Everyone has a bad day, Chichi-ue." The tense silence continued for a moment more before Lord Death clapped his large hands together and turned back towards the mirror.

"I suppose you're right, Kiddo-kun. Just be careful." His son nodded distractedly, before leaving quickly.

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He felt sharp pains often enough to be used to them. It used to be that he would double over in agony at the abdominal pain the chemicals in his blood caused. Now, his lips just tightened, grip strengthening on whatever he happened to be holding. It helped not one whit to know that his Shinigami body saved him from the worst of the pain. He hurt all the time, and yet he could not stop himself. Could not force himself to stop taking the medication, nor force himself to tell someone. He found himself hopelessly pathetic, more and more lately.

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Tsubaki studied him silently. They were having dinner, Kid looked ill, which as of recent wasn't odd. She cleared her throat timidly.

"Um, Kiddo-kun, please don't be offended by my question…" He felt a coil of suspicion in his stomach, but smiled well naturedly.

"Go ahead, Tsubaki." She swallowed. "Do you…have an eating disorder?" Soul, Black Star, Maka, and the Thompsons were dead silent. Kid's eyes were wide with a mix of shock and confusion. Tsubaki hastily explained her question. "Well, you seem to have lost a bit too much weight lately…and well, you do throw up a lot lately, not just around me, but at your own home, as well…" Liz had the grace to look a bit guilty. Everyone looked at their plates, waiting expectantly.

"I-I don't, but…thanks, for your concern." The meal was quiet after this, with an air of suspicion that did not come from Kid. He felt sick, and it was hard to eat anything, which wasn't helping his cause. Distraction pulled at him as he felt the ever present pulse of addiction, growing stronger with every passing minute. As nonchalantly as he could, he excused himself, hurrying out and onto the sidewalk. Disturbed by his own lack of control, he almost ran home, drawing looks from passerby. He found that he cared even less than he usually did.

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He never felt any sense of loss over symmetry. One fixation had taken the place of another. When he thought about it, which wasn't often, he missed the time when his mind was concerned with aesthetics and not drugs. There wasn't anything missing, though. Just the ever present wish that things could go back to the way they were. But, he reminded himself, at least this way his companions could stand to be around him. This hurt him more than he cared to admit.

Regardless of hurt, his friends were bound to catch on sooner rather than later. They weren't stupid, as much as he might doubt Black Star's intelligence. Perhaps dying really was the better option…

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Later, he would never be able to figure out quite what snapped in him that night. He looked in the mirror, and someone he wasn't well acquainted with stared back. He screamed, throwing his fist wildly, and shattering the mirror. The shards flew at him, leaving cuts which could no longer heal instantly, and he fell to the ground, wailing incoherent words.

Liz ran into the bathroom as fast as she could, all vestiges of sleep driven away by the scream she'd just heard. She saw her meister on the ground, and picked her way through the glass shards littering the ground. She heard his whimpers, but could not discern what he was saying.

"Kid, what's happened?" He didn't answer for a painfully long moment, curling into a tight ball and refusing to look at her.

"T-the medicine, Liz. Please just take it away…I-I know you didn't like me before, but…I swear! I'll do _anything_ if you just _don't let me have them ever again!_" The pistol gave him a confused look, then one of horrified realization. She ran to the nightstand, heedless of the glass. She'd grown up on the streets, after all. She knew what was going on.

She yanked open the drawer, revealing what she'd been dreading. So many orange bottles, thrown in _asymmetrically._ Her hand rose to her mouth as she choked back a sob, shutting the drawer so Patti would not see, and motioning for her sister to leave. She obeyed, for once, seeing the look on her sister's face.

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He could barely sit, let alone stand. Whatever his symptoms were before, withdrawal was worse. Liz rubbed small circles on the Shinigami's back with her fingers, as he curled in and out of a ball from muscle aches. Maka, Soul, Black Star, and Tsubaki were downstairs being held off by Patti. Neither sister wanted anyone to see their precious meister in so weak a state.

"I'm sorry…" The reaper gasped out. "So sorry…I've disgraced everyone…" She just chuckled, but continued rubbing so he knew that it wasn't at his expense.

"It's okay, Kid. You haven't disgraced us. Life happens to everyone, I suppose. Even Shinigami." And it was true. She couldn't find it in her heart to be angry, and she knew no one else would be able to. Not after what he'd said. _You didn't like me before. _The Thompsons quite literally lived in the house of death, yet, she'd never felt as dark as when she heard those words. She gave a very weak smile as the reaper shivered under her fingertips. He would at least be okay, now. She preferred injured pride to dead, any day.

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He walked into the classroom in a way he hadn't for nearly four months. Liz and Patti flanked him, and he walked with a confidence that he did not feel, even as his class mates stared. He used to be weird because he was Death's son. Now he was weird because he was a former drug addict. To his credit, he at least pretended to care what Stein was saying while whispers circulated.

'Says a lot about Shinigami-sama, huh?'

'Did we really think he was better than us? He shouldn't even be here…'

'What a disgrace to Shibusen…'

These words twisted the knife of guilt in his chest. People thought worse of his father because of this. He was a shameful, pathetic, liar. It would've been better if he'd just died.

The rest of the day was a lesson in student gossip, and in teacher disdain. The encouraging looks from his friends didn't help, not at all. And the impending talk with his father didn't help, either.

Needless to say, he never set foot in his father's school again.

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A/N: Hope you liked it. It was so long by my standards, at least. The end was supposed to be open, maybe he died, suicide, or just didn't go back to Shibusen. He does go by choice, after all. The song this is based on is very depressing, and I wrote this in the middle of a Green Day obsession (one of many…) so that may say something about the content of this. Please review, and I hope you like it!


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